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Month: June 2016

Zeitgeist-required disclaimer: StickIt! soundly denounces violence or discriminatory treatment of ANYONE based on class membership or non-harmful behavior. All people who are not harming others deserve lives of dignity, full citizenship, and unfettered participation in the rewards and responsibilities of their societies.

Some critical thinking and examination of evidence are seriously in order here, on both sides of the stall door.

So trans people are in serious, life-threatening danger if they cannot use the restroom of their choice, but the fears of women and girls that predators will invade their designated spaces are unfounded?

Let’s see what a little extended googling turns up.

Women and Girls Attacked in Women’s Restrooms by Men Wearing Women’s Clothing

2010: Norwood Smith Burns, dressed in women’s clothing, exposes himself to women and children in Walmart restroom.

2011: Thomas Lee Benson, convicted of sexually abusing girls, arrested at swim park while trying to talk to young children in the girls’ locker room, dressed in a bra, lipstick, and eyeliner.

2012: Mark Lazarus, a male wearing a skirt and tights, attempts to rape 71-year-old woman in public restroom. His prior record included assaulting an 11-year-old girl and exposing himself to other girls, while dressed as a schoolgirl, in 1999.

2012: Taylor Buehler, a male wearing a bra and wig and carrying a pair of women’s panties, was arrested in a women’s restroom, although the women in the restroom at the time did not know he was there. He admitted to an earlier incident of taking a shower in a girls’ locker room for sexual gratification.

2015: Richard Rodriguez dresses in women’s clothing to spy on and film the women using a mall restroom.

2016: Sean Patrick Smith, wearing a dress and a blonde wig, videotapes a female changing clothes in a Target dressing room in Ammon, Bonneville County, Idaho, US. Sean, who claims to be a transgender woman named Shauna Patricia Smith, admitted to police that he had recorded women in changing rooms before, for “the same reason men go online to look at pornography” and that he “finds the video sexually gratifying.”

While this is not an exhaustive or even a comprehensive study, the result of a couple hours of research does not bear out the constantly repeated claims that:

transgender people’s lives are constantly at risk if they are not allowed to use their preferred restrooms.

there is absolutely no evidence that women and girls have ever been harmed in women’s restrooms by men dressed as women.

In fact, one could argue from the three attacks on transgender people listed above, that the trans people involved might have been safer using the restroom aligned with their perceived sex.

If the concern were truly for the safety of transpeople, any of the many alternative arrangements suggested — such as separate, gender-neutral accommodations, or single occupancy unisex facilities — would make perfect sense. When the same people making claims not borne out by the evidence dismiss these solutions, one starts to wonder what is really going on.

Links to media (not self-) reports of restroom attacks presented in comments will be added to this post.